The seamstress has long been a favourite subject for artists: demure, pretty profile, gainfully employed, suggestions of the angel in the house. But the same pose can also be seductive and what is being sewn can send out a coded message, as the Colonel discovers when her calls on Mrs Bold (who is usually anything but) in Miss Buncle's Book. She is sitting on a sofa by the fire which irradiates "her small round face with rosy light", making herself "a nightie of peach-coloured crêpe-de-chine". The result is inevitable. This is La Couseuse (c1874-76, private collection) by Renoir.